


words I want to hear, baby

by idontshaveforsher_yesyoudo



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Sex, Kinda?, Multi, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Steve Rogers is Not a Virgin, also ?? quite a lot of swearing idk, jack thompson is mentioned, overuse of commas - i'm sorry, peggy is the dopest woman in the mcu & takes no shit from noone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 22:26:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18748330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idontshaveforsher_yesyoudo/pseuds/idontshaveforsher_yesyoudo
Summary: in which Peggy gets a visit from the future, waits for her boys to come home, and gets what she wished for when she least expects it.featuring a dumb-ass 2023!Steve Rogers being called out by his boy- and girlfriend, a shitty Jack Thompson, and Peggy taking no shit from anyone





	words I want to hear, baby

**Author's Note:**

> yes I'm back. written in 1.5hrs, all errors are mine, feedback always much, much appreciated !!! also, kind of trying out a new style of writing (mostly just w a lot of commas ??? idk ??? ) so pls tell me if its annoying bc... idk...
> 
> three notes: 1. I fucking love agent carter and I absolutely adore Peggy&Daniel's relationship in it  
> 2\. if the russos already have to fuck steve up, imma take the opportunity to write some wwthreesome bc I've had this idea for three years now but no way to place it into the mcu. Thank you for making time-travelling a thing!!  
> 3\. I didn't hate endgame but I strongly disliked Steve's ending. leaving Bucky in the future like that ? not on my watch
> 
> title, once again, from 'put your head on my shoulder' bc it's!!! a dope-ass song !!!

 

A week after Steve crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, he appears at the door of her room.

Not _her_ Steve, he tells her.

A Steve from the future, on a mission to finish something that has something to do with saving the world, he tells her.

A Steve who, apparently, was pulled out of the ice seventy years from now, only to find everyone he knew dead or on the verge of dying. A Steve who finds out that Bucky Barnes is still alive, captured by Hydra, which still isn’t defeated in the future, he tells her.

A Steve who’s gotten even better in bed through practice, which she appreciates, but also a Steve who thinks that staying in the past with her is a valid option.

And Peggy, well, she does what Peggy always does; talk sense into stubborn men.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind? Leaving Barnes behind just because you have a time machine and he doesn’t? Deciding that he’s more important than me?”

Steve stutters something like, “but I thought –,” but he doesn’t get far.

“I don’t give a damn what you thought. You get your pretty ass back to the future and take care of the people who need you there. I’ll get on fine on my own.”

Steve’s jaw clenches. “I just – promise me you’ll look for Bucky?”

Peggy smacks him over the head with a pillow. “Of course I’ll bloody look for James, who do you think I am?”

She continues to beat him while he scrambles away to protect himself, grinning widely, almost manically, and then he tumbles out of the bed they were both spread out on just a few minutes earlier.

Peggy looks over the edge of the bed to see him lying on the floor, cheeks flushed, hair tousled.

“I’ll look for both of you. Promise.”

The smile Steve gives her is radiant, but also so, so melancholic. He reaches up to pull her into a kiss, and the edge of the bed digs into her stomach, and she kisses him with everything that she has, awkward angle be damned.

Then he tugs her down on top of him, which leads to another round of sex, and then they’re lying on the floor and Peggy inspects the red carpet burn on her elbows and wonders if it’ll attract any unwanted attention when she goes back to work tomorrow. Steve next to her is as gorgeous as ever, the red marks she left on his chest already fading, which, that just won’t do. She makes a mental note to think of that later on, before Steve has to leave.

It’s much later, and he’s already in his weird, futuristic uniform slash suit and he hands her an envelope, white with her name written on it. She knows the handwriting, and Steve shrugs.

“He wanted me to give this to you, dunno what it says.”

“I’ll read it later, don’t worry.”

It’s now that she opens the front of his suit again, pulls him close, sucks a mark into his neck dark enough to last a few hours even on his body.

“Tell James to make sure you don’t get yourself killed. And give him my love.”

Steve smiles again, that radiant, so, so sad smile of his that breaks her heart and heals it at the same time.

“Take care of yourself, Peggy.”

She kisses him, then he’s gone again.

She would put the whole thing down as a fever dream, wishful thinking, if it weren’t for her messed-up bed and her smeared, almost completely faded lipstick and the letter in her hands.

She wipes away the tears that escaped her eyes without her noticing and sits down on the bed, opens the envelope.

The letter is short, written in Barnes’ chicken scratch even though he clearly put in some effort for it to be readable.

 _Pegs_ , it says, _I hope you’re doing well. God knows the future’s kind of fucked with me and Steve, but I gotta admit all is pretty swell now that we’re together again. I know that you’re gonna talk some sense to his dumb pretty head, and I told the stubborn prick that it makes more sense for you to go look for the two of us and not him doing weird time-travelling shit._

Peggy sniffs a bit and smiles against her will. He still writes the way he used to speak, even decades in the future.

_Listen, I know Steve’s gon tell you all about how you can find me and nuthin’ about how to find himself, so I’m attaching some estimated coordinates for where he went down (they’re not all that exact, but some clever guy in the future calculated it on account’a  where they found him and the ocean’s current and stuff, so it should be some kind of help, I guess. Try thawing him out in your universe before another seventy years have passed, will ya? Now this is getting too long, so you go have fun with me’n Stevie’s past selves, and know that I do still love you, even now that years have passed and my brain’s all sorts of fucked up. All the best to you, Pegs, and take care. Signed, James Bucky Barnes._

Below his signature, James has scribbled down a window of coordinates somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and, below that, a little heart. Peggy’s own heart clenches in her chest. Every day it will take to find her boys is a day to long.

\--

But, alas, the war happens. More precisely, the end of the war happens, with the last battles and the last PoW’s and the last dead – at least, the last dead because of bombs and guns, and after the dust has settled and the celebrations are over, Peggy feels tired down to her bones.

One evening, she takes out the letter again and carefully copies the coordinates, then writes down all the information on Hydra and James that she got from Steve on a different sheet of paper. She’d go look for them herself if there wasn’t so much to do in New York, errands to run for Phillips and her first weeks of work at the SSR and finding a flat that’s not the military issued, cramped up dorm she has to share with seven other women.

So she sends a copy of her information to Phillips, and another one to Howard Stark, and a third one to what’s left of the Howling Commandoes, always with a note attached to inform her on any progress they make with their search.

She’s on edge the first few weeks, waiting for some kind of result, any information that they might’ve found, but nothing happens. And it doesn’t help that, instead of being out in the field doing what she’s good at, she’s being used mostly as an overqualified secretary, spending her days at the SSR serving the male agents tea and filing the stuff they can’t be bothered with.

She argues with them, of course, tells them that she could be far more useful anywhere else other than sitting in the archives all day long, but after the first few weeks she learns how to pick her battles. Slow and steady wins the race, she tells herself, and settles into her routine of work and being at home in the small flat she shares with a lovely girl. Her roommate drags her out to go dancing a few weekends, but at the end of the night Peggy always comes to the conclusion that she misses two very specific men far too much than to let herself get into anything with another man yet.

If she’d thought that they were both lost in action it would’ve been different, she thinks, because then she would’ve been able to look for someone new. However, she knows that they’re out there, that they’ll come home to her sooner or later, and any kind of dancing with any kind of guy feels like betrayal to them, so, after the first few times, she doesn’t accompany her new friend to the dance hall anymore.

The months pass, and there’s still no news.

Once half a year is over, Peggy feels her hope fading even though she promised Steve she’d keep looking for them against all odds.

Jack Thompson gets more and more irritating every day, making dumb comments about how this isn’t the war anymore, that just because she had a crush on Captain America she isn’t a good Agent, that this isn’t a woman’s world, that he _wants more coffee_ , and Peggy’s about had it with him, but she bites her tongue because she can’t risk lashing out again or she might lose her job, and she wants to avoid that at all costs.

One morning, she sits at her desk in the back of the room, reading over a report of an investigation from earlier this week. There’s some kind of ruckus going on around her, which she ignores, because there’s always some kind of ruckus going on at the SSR.

But then it gets too loud to ignore and she rolls her eyes, looks up to give a piece of mind to whoever can’t shut their bloody mouth, but then it’s her own mouth that won’t shut.

There’s a crowd of agents in the middle of the office floor, and they’re all talking over each other, and amidst them, taller than almost any of them, with his blonde hair and his broad shoulders and his beautiful, always slightly too tight dress uniform, is Captain Steve Rogers himself.

And Peggy stares.

Stares at his sheepish grin and the red tint on his cheeks as he shakes hands with the men around him and tells them that it’s still kind of confidential that he was found in the ice, and as one of the agents moves away Peggy feels like her jaw might unhinge, because right next to Steve, like he always is, is one Sergeant James Bares, with a sharp haircut and a matching uniform and, god, one sleeve pinned up where his arm is missing.

Peggy stares at them, and then someone asks the Captain, which is what they’re all calling Steve, what he’s doing here, and he rubs the back of his neck, grows even more red, says, “I was looking for Agent Carter, actually.”

Heads swivel to look at her, and Peggy does her best to close her jaw, look unimpressed, raise an eyebrow. “Gentlemen,” she says, her voice the only one in the room now that everyone’s silent in shock.

She gets up from her chair, and the other Agents around Steve and James are whispering, and Peggy makes her way over to them, purses her lips. Then she does the first thing that comes to her mind.

She punches them both in the face.

There is outrage, and someone pulling her back, and Steve and James wearing matching grins on their faces.

“I’m so sorry, gentlemen, Agent Carter can be a bit _aggressive_ –“ Jack Thompson hisses, holding her around the waist. Peggy stomps his foot, elbows him into his solar plexus, steps out of his hold and into Steve’s personal space, pulling him down to her height by his tie. Steve’s eyes widen comically.

“It’s been _seven months_. You asshole didn’t even give me any bloody coordinates before deciding to sink yourself into the fucking ocean.”

Then she spins on her heel to look at James, who’s snickering at the scene.

“And _you_. Waltzing in here without an announcement, almost giving me a heart attack, who do you think you are?”

James grins at her. “Aw, shucks, doll, don’t be like that.”

She slaps him across the face. “Don’t you _doll_ me. You have something to make up to me, the both of you.” She points from one man to the other.

“Sure.” Steve shrugs, straightens his tie. “When’s your lunch break?”

Peggy looks at the rest of the office, the other Agents still staring at the scene in confusion. “Right now?”

Steve’s eyes twinkle. “Well then, Ma’am, care to step out with us for a bite?”

“Sure, just have to grab my coat.”

As she does, James says to the room at large, “We’re borrowin’ Agent Carter for the afternoon. Anyone got a problem with that, they can discuss it with Captain America.”

Peggy steps up to them again and smiles.

“Shall we, gentlemen?”

They both grin at her.

Steve offers her his arm and Peggy links their arms. James follows the two of them and, out of the corner of her eye, Peggy can see him throw a sloppy salute at the room as the door closes behind them.

Outside in the hallway, they wait for the elevator and when they’re finally inside, hidden from the outside world, Peggy pulls Steve down to her level and kisses him, quick and dirty and with a smile threatening to pull up the corners of her mouth. Then she pulls away, raises an eyebrow at James. Sure enough, he crowds into her space, pulling her close by her hips, kissing her with vigour.

She’s panting by the time he lets go of her and it’s just in time for her to wipe off any lipstick left over on their lips before the elevator reaches ground level.

As they step into the sun side by side, Peggy grins at her boys.

“Well, I do hope you have private rooms somewhere close. I’m sure we can think of one or the other thing to do on my lunchbreak.”

James smirks at her and it makes her shiver in anticipation. “Oh doll, I know a few things I’d like to eat.”

 


End file.
